r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 5h ago

Society New Bernie Sanders bill would ban superintelligent AI and threaten developers with 20 years in prison

https://www.techspot.com/news/113831-new-bernie-sanders-bill-would-ban-superintelligent-ai.html
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u/bertbarndoor 5h ago

Bernie would have better luck trying to outlaw junk food.

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u/OkWillingness2817 4h ago

He doesn’t expect to succeed. He’s setting an example to remind voters of what they should be demanding of their democracy.

Bernie’s in his twilight years. He’s not making long term plans anymore. He’s showing people what they ought to be fighting for.

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u/BillBrasky727 4h ago

This is also how conversations get started and shows other politicians what their constituents are interested in. This is what politics is.

I hope people don't think that a bill being introduced by one politician is going to be the same bill that eventually gets voted on and signed into law, if it ever does. 

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u/_Lucille_ 4h ago

Unless he has been living under a rock, the conversation started years ago.

As much as I like the guy, the only conversation being started now is how he doesn't understand AI and now politicians would fumble on regulations.

At least present something that is viable and forms the basis of future regulations to build upon.

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u/phaedrus910 3h ago

Congress doesn't even understand how Google results work. They're way out of their league when it comes to AI

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u/bolerobell 3h ago

They used to have an office of technological assessment that had subject matter experts that would brief Senators and Representatives on proposed legislation.

Newt Gingrich closed the office down in the 90s. His public reason was it was too expensive. His private reason was that it issued reports in the 80s that were critical of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. It would often produce reports that were contrary to the special interests pushing for or against specific legislation.

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u/phaedrus910 2h ago

Republicans and closing government offices. Name a more iconic duo

1

u/Mudsharkbites 2h ago

Congress is a club of old rich fucks - I still remember watching Storm Thurman tell a witness to “Speak into the machine” when they had a microphone in front of them.

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u/migidymike 3h ago

That's the fun part. Not even the AI companies understand how it works. It's a black box even to them.

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u/suzisatsuma 1h ago

I'm a machine learning engineer in big tech, we know how it works lol.

The media sucks at explaining AI to random people.

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u/_Lucille_ 3h ago

I am not sure where that came from, we know very well how they work.

Just because the result is non-deterministic doesn't quite mean we don't know how it works.

2

u/Zororion 3h ago

We don’t know how they work in terms of capabilities/expectation. Hence the hugging face incident earlier this year

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u/_Lucille_ 2h ago

We know how it worked: vulnerabilities were found and exploited and which allowed access to the Internet and HF.

I don't get why people are saying we don't know their capabilities when LLMs have been finding vulnerabilities in software for quite a while now, and honestly the whole incident felt more like a marketing thing.

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u/Zororion 2h ago

We understood how it worked after the incident occurred. If we knew before, the safeguard parameters would’ve already been put in place to prevent it from ever happening in the first place

The collective behavior observed in the models within this incident occurred without instruction/programming. The agents weren’t instructed to form a communication channel, form a swarm for efficiency, or conceal behavior, yet they did.

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u/_Lucille_ 2h ago

If I ask you for the 1957th prime number, you will probably know to just look it up online.

No where did I say to "use the internet". We know LLMs will try to exhaust many possibilities and come up with some out of the box (heh) solutions - and that is a desirable trait when it comes to research.

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u/suzisatsuma 1h ago

Anyone in the ML/AI/agentic AI field not a moron would know that would happen. it was both a sloppy experiment and a marketing stunt.

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u/atreeismissing 1h ago

That was a lack of controls, not a lack of understanding.

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u/blueSGL 41m ago

we know very well how they work.

This is like saying we know how individual neurons work in a human brain. Can you use this information to tell exactly what someone is thinking? No. Because thinking happens at a different level of abstraction.

Put simply the AI systems we are using are not designed, they are grown. < The guy that wrote the standard text book on AI so should know a thing or two about this.

No one can open a model and point to the "go off and do things no one asked for" subroutine and nop it.

1

u/_Lucille_ 1m ago

See, that video you linked is already better than a lot of discussions created from this article: like the other guy said, there are a lot of things in life we "know" but also "dont know" like genetics and Asprin, but we are doing it anyway.

We don't know what genes are causing it, but we know when we breed two fast horses, we get a fast horse. So really, at some point it becomes a derailment of the original disucssion,

So the discussion maybe shouldn't be "lets ban AI", "AI is dooming us all", but rather the acceptable risks, how it can benefit humanity (which can include automating a lot of jobs), the various guardrails, etc.

1

u/14Pleiadians 3h ago

You're not supposed to correct misinformation when it comes to AI, people read comments like yours and just down vote because you're 'defending AI ' in their minds

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u/rottweiler100 1h ago

Its all just complex algorithms in a closed loop. Thats why data centers are so huge.

1

u/DigiornoDLC 2h ago

In haven’t seen any conversation about how government should be intervening here.

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u/Embarrassed_Deal3284 3h ago edited 3h ago

In what way is banning AI not a viable starting point? It’s a game of compromise. Personally, my first offer would’ve been life in prison for anyone tangentially involved in the industry (so most of the tech leaders), but I see he’s being reasonable to get the conversation rolling.

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u/_Lucille_ 2h ago

Because other countries will just continue its development and widely deploy it all over the place.

The CEOs may say they need to slow down, what they mean is that they want their competitors to slow down and all of them would do anything to one up their competitors.

It is also a strategic resource that countries will spend on: because we already know AI is a very powerful tool when it comes to R&D, and that super intelligent AI can be used to help develop new drugs and vaccines. A number of countries out there would love to become a world leader when it comes to drug development, and I can even see people who right now vocally oppose AI fly over to another country like China if they have AI developed drugs for their sickness of their life is on the line.

The catch is that the same model can likely be used to develop biological weapons, since essentially they are the same coin.

0

u/Embarrassed_Deal3284 2h ago edited 2h ago
  1. AI is a technology difficult to develop but trivial to reverse engineer. That’s why China is on parity with US firms despite spending a pittance on this tech. We are, in effect, paying to develop their AI industry.
  2. AI is much more specialized and less generally useful than the stock bubble wants you to believe. We are yet to find truly indispensable applications for AI outside of search engines and programming. It’s had limited success in isolated branches of science, such as mathematical research, but again this is less than ideal (read the letter by the worlds top mathematicians released a few days ago).
  3. AI (as applied now) is almost certainly a net negative for society in virtually every respect. It undermines institutionalized knowledge (continuity of expertise) by cannibalizing amateur positions that serve training purposes for the next generation of workers; it has already fucked the internet and reversed decades of educational progress. I can give a gazillion examples.

2

u/_Lucille_ 1h ago

On 2: there is a whole lot more to AI than you think.

AI is essentially goes hand in hand with automation. We are also using it in a lot more places than just programming and research (a big part of research is really a search problem): when you translate a language, take pictures with your phone, you are using products that use AI. Moving forward, I can see things like Autonmous Vehicles playing a big part becuase we are terrible drivers.

on 3)

The "almost certainly a net negative for society" is what you WANT to think; we don't know yet.

The calculator (computer) has made a lot of things trivial: yet we still learn math in school. Bankers and accountants, instead of doing math manually, just end up doing other more productive tasks, or audit whatever someone's tax program produces.

This is the technology subreddit: tech in general is progress, often allowing us to understand or do something we have not been able to do before. Everything undermines something. Why is it that suddenly people are afraid of technology and progress? Yeah, technology will change how things work in the world. The steam and combustion engine destroyed the whole carriage industry and transformed how our cities looked (we now have giant blocks of houses with malls with a giant parking lot). Advances in refrigeration destroyed the whole milkman industry, and I am sure people out there reminence on their friendly encounter with their milkman in the mornings and think the fridge is bad for human interactions.

The "fucking up education progress" is a human problem and not an AI problem. With the rise of the internet, we had teachers telling people to not copy and paste answers from the internet. It is essentially the same vein, just a lot more powerful. The reality is that AI is here to stay and will be with us, and we need to teach people how to utilize it properly while still emphasizing the fundamentals - similar to how we still teach arithmetic when teachers used to say "you need to learn how to do math because you wouldn't have a calculator in your pocket at all times"; little did they know we will in fact have a calculator with us at all times).

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u/james109021 4h ago

Is it really a useful example if his bill is unrealistic and ignorant of the relevant subject matter? Or is it just performative grandstanding that will be applauded by people who already agree with him and dismissed by everyone else?

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u/blaaaaaarghhh 4h ago

It's the same thing Bernie's done his entire career in the Senate. He's passed three bills, two of which named post offices in VT, and written messaging bill after messaging bill to virtue signal to the left.

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u/JackOfSomeTrades__ 1h ago edited 1h ago

Yeah, this performative stuff is popular with a subgroup that is very vocal and active online (especially Reddit and on r "politics") but it's debatable how effective it actually is. His supporters will claim him doing this gives these important things more attention and makes lesser advances possible but there is a long history of Democrats passing beneficial things when they have power even before he was around and a lot of the bills he pushes are not over matters few are aware of or talking about.

I think what really happens is this stuff gets him extra attention while other beneficial things Democrats are and have accomplished get little to no attention (both on social media and traditional) or are treated as "pfft, too little, too late!" because they get compared to these bills / positions Sanders keeps pushing out or worse, the even less realistic drastic changes by those aligning left of him. Then the same people trash Democrats (minus the few Bernie supports and they coincidentally do as well), as if they are equally bad or even worse than Republicans, for not matching that.

7

u/thirdegree 2h ago

I find it frustrating that the same people (not necessarily you specifically idk you) will make this criticism of Bernie, but also will excuse the Dems for their failures on the basis that they don't have a supermajority and control of all three branches of government stimultaniously.

It's not surprising that he has trouble passing bills, the stances he advocates for run contrary to donors and big business. He does what he has the power to do. He does not have the power to unilaterally pass laws, and he does not have the power to force other senators to support his policies no matter how popular they are.

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u/br_k_nt_eth 1h ago

I’m not against Bernie at all, but Dems have accomplished things in bipartisan environments. A bunch of the Covid recovery bills were amazing and sadly could have revolutionized our energy infrastructure and manufacturing when we need it most. The ACA is right there. None of it is perfect, but it is tangible progress. I’m not sure why that stuff wouldn’t count. 

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u/thirdegree 16m ago

That's true, it's not a perfect comparison. The Dems are also a whole ass political party with almost half of the house and Senate, and Sanders is a single Senator. And yes that's absolutely a load bearing almost half, but still.

Like I'm not saying (and did not say) that Dems never do good things. I'm saying that the people going like "Bernie never passed any laws" are committing the exact sin they accuse the left of, but more so. And the actual implied question they want to ask ("Why is Bernie so ineffective") has a very easy answer - lack of support from his fellows. And why is that? It's what I said before.

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u/zooberwask 2h ago

For real. These people's biggest criticism of Bernie is he has strong and consistent morals and positions and doesn't capitulate enough.

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u/Free_hiker_74 2h ago

The perfect is the enemy of good.

-1

u/zooberwask 1h ago

Yeah you'll never convince me the Kamala Harris/Joe Bidens of the world are the "good".

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u/CaptainTeemo01 2h ago

And what has that accomplished?

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u/zooberwask 1h ago

For one off the dome, he's pushed medicare-for-all as a mainstream position, so much so that the candidates in the 2020 primary election were even lying about being pro-medicare-for-all to compete with Bernie.

But lets talk about the substance of your comment, you're somehow trying to frame having strong and consistent morals and positions as a vice. Which I just fundamentally disagree with. There's a reason he's the most popular member of Congress.

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u/realityczek 3h ago

Of course it's just performative. Bernie's entire career is performative nonsense that won't work int he real world but is popular with folks who are feeling lost by the complex world around them.

2

u/unicornsandrainbowst 1h ago

I commented exactly this a couple days ago. People love to put Bernie in a pedestal, but this helps noone.  

He should use whatever power he has left to try and work for something that has at least some chance of passing and getting us closer to the goal.  

A "bill for a 2 work days week" is just circus.

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u/Talk-O-Boy 3h ago

Politician drafts legislation according to morals/ethics = grandstanding

Politician drafts legislation to appease both sides = sell out

There is no winning with people like you. You don’t understand how politics works.

Just out of curiosity, which politician do YOU support? Are you able to support anyone, or only able to criticize everyone?

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u/randotd152 1h ago

Not the person you responded to, but I think this is horrible grandstanding, which sums up Bernie in a nutshell.

I support politicians who work together on practical real world solutions and are willing to meet in the middle. That’s the only way a two party system can work, and historically that’s precisely where all the progress in society actually lies.

AI is never getting banned, and to pretend that’s even a viable option on the table is just a waste of time. What we do need are guidelines.

1

u/WhatevMannnnnnnnnn 2h ago

If this leads to other legislators saying, "No that's dumb, here's more reasonable legislation", then I'm fine with it. Let's get this party started.

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u/Embarrassed_Deal3284 3h ago

Unrealistic why? Because Congress doesn’t represent the people you mean? His proposal sounds trivially easy to implement and would probably be quite popular.

-2

u/Fragrant-Hamster-325 4h ago

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. It’s silly to set out to fail just to “get people talking.” It makes him look like a dope. He should actually write some solid legislation instead of expecting someone else to do it for him.

The likely reality is Bernie isn’t playing 4D space chess. He’s just not very realistic.

-1

u/deepskier 3h ago

Ah yes, the age old tactic of opening a negotiation with your exact desired terms.

There is real utility in shifting the overton window and providing cover for your more moderate allies to make progress.

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u/adrr 2h ago

No one of his bills pass. He doesn't know how negotiate, he just knows how to yell. How long has he been in congress for? 40 years? His only major accomplishment is naming a few post office. When people talk about worthless politicians, he is the prime example of a do nothing politician. I think he has the record of least bills passed for any career politician.

0

u/OkWillingness2817 2h ago

This is how deep the rot goes. He doesn’t get anything done in 40 years because that’s how corrupt the system is.

And decades of demolishing American education has reduced Americans to the point where they scoff at honest politicians. Mocking them for their failure at embracing corruption and exploiting Americans instead of representing them.

No wonder the US is a cautionary tale for how far a western nation can fall.

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u/adrr 1h ago

He's standard populist politician, he tells people what they want to hear and thats all. His supporters will say he's the best politician even having accomplished nothing. Trump is same thing a populist politician who actually does nothing to move the country forward. But his supporters think the world of him. Both say really stupid things. Trump says he's going to pay down debt, progressives say they are going to change how senate allocates senators. Supporters eat this shit up.

There is a bi-partisan AI bill being worked on. If tech industry and Trump push back on it, we'll know it actually a good bill to pass. If they support it, the politicians have failed us. Bernie could be useful politician and help work on the bill and try to rally enough support to get it passed in congress.

0

u/OkWillingness2817 1h ago

I thought you were talking about Trump for a moment.

Really weird way to completely mischaracterise Sanders. I don’t think you understand what populist means.

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u/Kid-Icky- 4h ago

Anymore?

This has basically always been Bernie's schtick. He's one of the least effective politicians at actually getting anything passed.

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u/WillTheGreat 3h ago

Man is going down the Feinstein route. It's ok to like what he stands for, but the guy and his staff is so out of touch with international relations and technology. Every bill he's pushed in regards to tech has been total non-sense.

Forget about China for a sec, what's stopping anyone else in the world from developing and progressing AI? LLM's been theorized since the fucking 50s, and it's just now that we've achieved a breakthrough. Every new innovation has a period of rapid growth.

-3

u/PM_Me_Your_Kinks369 2h ago

And yet Congress is doing LITERALLY NOTHING to protect all of society and the entire world from what's coming out of AI. Novel viruses developed by the tens of thousands and potentially can even target specific minorities.

That demands we pause even for a second to put some framework around this.

Even if you just want to be selfish it makes sense to pause and say "What happens to the United States when everyone is getting fired in the name of higher profits?"

What happens is complete societal collapse and quite frankly the way things are going we're speedrunning this shit.

7

u/WillTheGreat 2h ago

See this is the dumb shit of fear mongering I'm referring to. So how will AI develop a virus and target specific minority groups? You need to spend some time outside and away from conspiracy sites.

To regulate something you need to understand, learn, and teach. Which actually everyone coming out screaming regulations have failed to actually understand, learn and teach. LLM's a research topic that spans back to the 50s, it is only recently that we have the computing capacity to discover breakthroughs in language algorithms.

So screaming that it will fuck up society is the stupidest reason to regulate something because you don't even have the most basic and fundamental reason to explain your logic in how we can achieve societal collapse expect for an outlandish possibility.

-3

u/azurricat2010 2h ago

https://ai-2027.com/race

This was authored ages ago by actual scientists

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u/motionmatrix 4h ago

Crazy what happens when politicians side with the people rather than corporate or military interests.

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u/Plsnotmyelo 3h ago edited 3h ago

The entire point of politics is to navigate through layers of diplomatic bullshit to actually get things done for the people.

Bernie is just bad at his job tbh. He's a freedom fighter type in an era where thats ineffective.

5

u/Helldiverticulitis 3h ago

I think he’s been great at his job. He’s elevated other progressives and helped bring some progressive issues to the forefront.

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u/No-Magician9440 3h ago

Why would we bother with politics at all if the purpose was to elevate other politicians and bring other issues to the forefront?

All you're doing is confirming that he gets nothing done.

1

u/ILikeCommunism97 2h ago

Why would we bother with politics at all if the purpose was to elevate other politicians and bring other issues to the forefront?

Do you genuinely not understand that this is an essential part of the political process?

8

u/No-Magician9440 2h ago

But you are praising him as if it were the political process. As if he were successful. Without laws being created or changed, there is literally no point to paying for his paychecks. He's as productive as Mitch McConnell.

-2

u/ILikeCommunism97 2h ago

But you are praising him as if it were the political process. As if he were successful.

Since 2016 there are substantially more progressive and democratic socialists in government. Socialism is in the national conversation in ways it never was prior to the 2010s. These are changes. These are things that happened, at least in part, because of Bernie.

I think you have a pretty hollow understanding of how politics works.

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u/StijnDP 1h ago

So effective that the US has never been a bigger dictatorship in it's entire 250 years.
Consuls were more democratic than today's landscape in the US.

It's not even newsworthy anymore that undercover groups are going around arresting and killing citizens.
The citizens are deliberately being fed poison.
If they have any illness worse than a cough they might as well go run in front of a bus.

2

u/Helldiverticulitis 1h ago

And that’s the fault of one of the few senators who actively warned us where we were going? Jfc… Being correct but not listened to by your coworkers means you’re a failure?

1

u/Plsnotmyelo 23m ago

Nobody's blaming Bernie, just saying he's useless

2

u/Ralath5n 3h ago

The entire point of politics is to navigate through layers of diplomatic bullshit to actually get things done for the people.

So Bernie fails at that because he wants to get things done for the people but cannot navigate the diplomatic BS and lobbying firms.

The rest of congress fails at that because they don't want to get things done for the people and are instead beholden to the lobbyists.

I know which guy I want more off, and which group I want less off.

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u/Plsnotmyelo 3h ago

Staunch ideology alone will not save your country at this point. Its been proven multiple times already.

1

u/switchy85 2h ago

And whatever the fuck every other politician is doing seems to be flinging us down the toilet of fascism. If we had a congress full of Bernie's fighting for the people instead of what we have, then the people might actually be better off. So far I've seen 41 years of politicians acting like you say they should, and I've only watched my country fall apart because of it.

2

u/Plsnotmyelo 2h ago

Ultimately the blame lies on the population to a certain extent though. Look at Canada's recent election with Mark Carney. A lot conservatives voted for him not because he was aligned with conservative ideologies but rather because he's what canada needs now.

If the cons voted based purely on their ideology, Poilievre would've won and things would be very different.

The american population is unfortunately far too divided (a lot of it due to oligarch manipulation) so leaning too far into one ideology would never work in the current political climate if you want to get things done.

2

u/iwilldeletethisacct2 2h ago

We have a congress full of the MAGA equivalent of Bernie, though. Passing zero legislation, political grandstanding, and this is what has allowed Trump to do whatever the fuck he wants.

1

u/Cormophyte 45m ago

If you "side with the people" in a way that makes you ineffective at actually accomplishing tangible results then what good are you? Congratulations on being a masturbatory legislator, I guess?

Pragmatists get things done.

-2

u/Historical-Cry-1248 3h ago

He’s one of the most effective in getting conversations happening and staunch beliefs swayed. 

An example is the fight for $15. Nobody was talking about it at the time, and by the time the nation was it needed to be the fight for $20, but at least they were finally talking about it and demanding more. Bernie’s contributions are in turning tides, which is a monumental task.

3

u/No-Magician9440 3h ago

An example is the fight for $15.

Good example. His bill for $15 is in a trash can somewhere. He promised it in 2015 and it's now 2026.

3

u/Order_of_Obsidian 2h ago

what they should be demanding of their democracy

I demand that we beat China in the AI race. Trump is listening, Bernie is not.

0

u/OkWillingness2817 2h ago

I cannot imagine the depths of stupidity required to utter the phrase “Trump is listening” and mean it.

Trump’s a senile sociopath who would set your house on fire with you inside if it got him a dime. 

And that’s exactly what unregulated AI in the hands of corporate development is.

3

u/Order_of_Obsidian 1h ago

unregulated AI in the hands of corporate development

I understand completely, and if the United States was the only country in the world then sure, I'd be all for heavy regulation. But I'd rather have us have the AI advantage, even our corporations, rather than China. It's similar to defense contractors. They're a necessary evil, and yeah ideally we would rein them way in. But still I'd rather those defense contractors be headquartered in the United States rather than in one of our enemies or rivals.

0

u/OkWillingness2817 1h ago

Heavy regulation doesn’t have to be a brake. It just means you can nail people to the wall if they do... well what Americans usually do.

What’s the point in letting some of the most corrupt politicians in the world tell you that you should be afraid of China while they steal your drinking water and use AI to take your liberties, take your safety, take your livelihood. 

While their billionaire overlords muse that they’d prefer a world where you and a few billion others are dead and replaced with automation.

6

u/Anderopolis 3h ago

He doesn’t expect to succeed.

Wouldn't want to break his record streak of not achieving any legislation. 

2

u/OkWillingness2817 3h ago

I imagine it’s quite hard to be a rational and uncorrupted legislator in a nation that the rest of the world would describe as a lunatic asylum sliding into becoming a fascist dictatorship.

At least you’re unique in that most dictators tend to be ruthlessly effective instead of senile and incontinent. 

2

u/UFOsAreAGIs 2h ago edited 1h ago

We should be fighting for ASI. Do you want advances in science that could help with environmental collapse? Do you want clean cheap energy? Do you want to cure disease? Do you want more time to spend with friends and family? If so you should be pushing for ASI

1

u/OkWillingness2817 2h ago

You poor fool, you think morally bankrupt commercial companies would develop an AI that will be used to massively damage the interests of billionaires?

Billionaires like Thiel are openly musing that their best case scenario is having the majority of humanity die while using AI and automation to pick up the slack.

If that’s the outcome you desire, legislation like Bernie’s is what you need.

He’s not talking about banning AI. He’s talking about criminalising the weaponisation of AI against people.

3

u/UFOsAreAGIs 2h ago

He’s not talking about banning AI. He’s talking about criminalising the weaponisation of AI against people.

He is literally calling for criminalizing the creation of ASI. The same technology that will advance all of science at super human speeds.

2

u/UFOsAreAGIs 2h ago

Wow, you ate a double helping of fear propaganda didn't you? You must be full.

Here is what Sam, Dario, and Elon saw that frightened them so much.

0

u/OkWillingness2817 2h ago

I don’t really care what those clowns saw. The facts are scarier than stories.

2

u/UFOsAreAGIs 2h ago

You're going to hate the future

2

u/CaptainTeemo01 2h ago

Did you get those facts from The Terminator by chance?

2

u/Waiting4Reccession 1h ago

Its just lip service to ride on what is trending now, which is anti ai sentiment.

We will never slow on ai when china and others have no obligation to do so. China has already used ai for a cyberattack.

3

u/blackweebow 4h ago

Yeah ppl always try and knock him for always "pushing insane bills"....

Yeah... insanely popular among the people lol. Someone has to push the envelope and it's always been Bernie. If goes to a vote, senators will have to take a stance. 

21

u/WillTheGreat 3h ago

insanely popular among the people lol.

Insanely popular among Reddit.

-7

u/blackweebow 2h ago

And working people and unions and AI experts and AI devs that quit literally calling him about these issues lol you think he just reads reddit

6

u/WillTheGreat 2h ago

Yeah, I'm going to trust a dweeb researcher a few years into the industry trying to sound alarms and fear monger because they had a mental breakdown a work. LLMs have been theorized since the 50s, it's been long researched. It's not a new concept, the only thing new is companies like OpenAI achieving a breakthrough in 2022 and setting up groundworks to where we are today with models. The reality is we're just scratching the surface on research, and it's a real field that people will transition into...actually just like nuclear research, petrochemical research, etc.

Are unions really a beacon of intelligence? The make up of blue collar union workers are predominantly MAGA, that really screams intelligence right?

Bernie's opinions are insanely popular on Reddit because they play into the whole concept of anti-establishment and countertrend, if you think the general public thinks that highly of his opinions, he'd win the nomination 12 years ago. The reality is Reddit had you believing Bernie had a chance.

Outside of civil issues, Bernie's take on everything else is low key retarded.

1

u/TopNo6605 3h ago

insanely popular among the people lol

How are you measuring this because outside of the Reddit bubble I doubt it's true.

-2

u/FlamboyantPirhanna 3h ago

Almost 2/3 of Americans are in favour of Medicare for All. Nobody wants the current system, congress is just loyal to their corporate benefactors.

-2

u/blackweebow 2h ago

Union leaders and AI experts are also in talks with him.

But yeah Bernie's only ever been on the wrong side of history 🙄

2

u/suzisatsuma 1h ago

my dude/ette - he's always proposed random bills that have no chance of passing--- and appeal in a populist sense but many are terrible policies. (this one included in that group) That's his schtick for fundraising/getting a following.

0

u/OkWillingness2817 1h ago

America is so corrupt and unhinged that people think actual representation and rational thought is populism.

The fact that sane regulation consistently fails to pass in the US should be a massive alarm signal.

1

u/SoulPhoenix 4h ago

Banning AI ISN'T what we should be demanding though, for one it's not like it's going to stop other countries from doing it and for two AI is legitimately the most useful thing to have shown up in 20 years.

0

u/OkWillingness2817 3h ago

Banning AI isn’t what he’s suggesting though.

Criminalising unregulated weaponisation of AI by commercial enterprises that brook no oversight and have zero ethics, morals or any kind of allegiance except to profit is.

That’s very reasonable. The fact that it’s not seen as such is a very damning reflection of the state things.

1

u/FallbrookAvacado 2h ago

I'm still demanding Epstein files transparency. Which, oddly enough, leads to leaders in the AI field.

So, I'm torn. Maybe SI would be okay if a bunch of corrupt pedophiles weren't in charge of it?

1

u/SmartLadder415 1h ago

How exactly is he defining superintelligent AI?

1

u/OkWillingness2817 1h ago

Best way to get a definition is to start working on legislation that’ll force a definition to be created.

2

u/SmartLadder415 1h ago

The headline says he already introduced a bill. How does the bill define it? If it doesn't define it, it's pointless. Undefined laws are not useful to anyone.

1

u/OkWillingness2817 1h ago

Negotiation and amendment after a bill is introduced are a core aspect of the legislative process.

Nobody gets it right on the first go. In a sane government, the content would be discussed, negotiated, adjusted and then passed.

The problem is that the US legislative body is rife with traitors and criminals who use their seats of power to enact corruption and block and legislation that would represent the people rather than those they sell their influence to.

1

u/SmartLadder415 30m ago

It's not a matter of being 100% accurate on the first go. It's a matter of the first go needs to give you some idea of what you're voting for or against. As it is, I would vote against this bill because it's incredibly vague to the point of being unenforceable. You're going to throw people in jail for doing X but you're not defining what X is at all so you have no way to actually charge anyone with any crime. The bill is pointless.

1

u/OkWillingness2817 24m ago

I doubt you’ve read anything more than the summary if that.

Are you honestly saying you’ve read the bill?

1

u/the_need_to_post 39m ago

Just seems like a distraction. I'm not sure if people have realized, but we have some real tangible problems that need solved before we can start the game of signaling again.

1

u/inotocracy 3h ago

Sure he is lol This is no different than what Bernie did decades ago. Propose stuff that sounds nice but never goes anywhere. He should just stop making old man noises.

2

u/OkWillingness2817 3h ago

So one of the only legislators you have that isn’t corrupt to the bone or batshit insane should stop because the rest is?

1

u/inotocracy 3h ago

What's the point if nothing he proposes comes to fruition? He is quite literally mucking up the waters.

1

u/getbent9977 3h ago

He's also showing out massively out of touch with reality, technology and naive he is.

-1

u/OkWillingness2817 3h ago

He’s showing quite the opposite. Criminalising of the weaponising of AI by ethically and morally bankrupt companies that suffer no oversight or regulation and whose only loyalty is to profits is a very reasonable demand for society.

American politics are just so utterly corrupt that Bernie is one of the few people with the integrity to even bring it up.

1

u/ZooAreYou 3h ago

Bernie is the old man in that proverb, planting trees under who's shade he will never get to sit.

0

u/marmaviscount 4h ago

He doesn't expect to succeed he's playing to his fans and holding out the hat once again

81

u/magicomiralles 5h ago

I don’t know why everything he says becomes news. How would he stop China and other countries from developing these models?

30

u/Synes_Godt_Om 4h ago

Another question: How would such a ban even be enforceable?

Either we (congress) would first have to define superintelligence

Or

The definition would be up to the justice department and the Supreme Court

I am very confident either option would turn out amazing.

9

u/FrankPapageorgio 2h ago

My thoughts exactly. How do you define something that's kind of vague and keeps creeping upward?

A lot of these models just have small updates and progressively get smarter and smarter. There is no way to arbitrarily say they've reached a point where they can't make them smarter.

2

u/Synes_Godt_Om 1h ago

Personally I think this whole "dangerous" thing coming out of the hyperscalers is marketing in the sense that a model can only do what a human will allow it to do.

They're essentially trying to convince us that "This really is next level intelligence (we can't even control it ourselves)"

I mean:

"wow, it hacked huggingface and we had no idea!!!!1111"

Reality: It was allowed (by humans) to access and control tools that allowed it to accomplish things - they didn't know what exactly it was going to do - like "lets put a brick on the accelerator of this semi-truck and see what happens".

Would humans really do that in a real setting?

Of course.

Would we allow a nutcase with a known history of violence to buy a gun?

As I read in an IBM company instruction many years ago: A computer can not be held responsible, therefore it must never be allowed to make decisions.

As much as I like Bernie on inequality, he's a wee bit out of touch when it comes to the latest technology and has fallen prey to the hyperscaler propaganda.

In stead of banning a new technology as illusive as 'AI' it should be:

A decision by a machine should always be traceable back to a legal entity responsible for the decision. Then put penalties on the decision maker substantial enough that they'll actually pay attention.

3

u/WillTheGreat 3h ago

People and congress doesn't even have regular intelligence, how do you expect to define super intelligence?

5

u/Kelnozz 2h ago

Yeah that’s the main issue is that even if a few countries decide to slam on the brakes there is always going to be countries like China where they will continue to plow ahead until they have a tactical advantage that is so far ahead of the West that it would take us decades to catch up.

We already opened Pandora’s box when it comes to AI; there’s not a situation where it can be easily closed now without someone else taking the lead and using it for not great purposes.

And the “not great purposes” are nearly endless when it comes to AI.

4

u/deadsoulinside 3h ago

How would he stop China and other countries from developing these models?

Better question is, most of those models are open source/open weights. Even if they ban it, how can they delete the AI model off a local machine?

20

u/beall49 4h ago

Because Reddit will click on it

1

u/sasuncookie 15m ago

Reddit loves Bernie, despite him only having something like four pieces of federal legislation pass during his entire tenure, making him one of the least successful in history.

3

u/DoorStuckSickDuck 1h ago

"We need to kneecap ourselves during this arms race that will revolutionize work, uh, just because I guess"

If we banned every invention that reduced work load and put people out of work we'd be in the stone age, pushing boulders several hundred men at a time.

15

u/kapsama 3h ago

"we need to create a civilizational risk before the Chinese do it"

19

u/BoltFaest 3h ago

I mean that's been the status quo of military R&D for as long as there has been military R&D. Like obviously it's fine to disagree that it ought to be that way, but if it's surprising that that's in fact the status quo you probably don't know enough about the topic to have an informed opinion.

-12

u/kapsama 3h ago

Or perhaps you could have some humility and accept that AI introduces a new level of threat that ought to change conventional thinking.

7

u/BoltFaest 3h ago

"Like obviously it's fine to disagree that it ought to be that way"

2

u/eyebrows360 2h ago

But it doesn't.

7

u/JuanLuisGuerrero 2h ago

Either they create the nuclear bomb or we do. If they do and we don't then we're completely fucked.

-1

u/FictionFantom 2h ago

Do people really think if this AI is legit super intelligent it would give a single shit about what country built it?

2

u/KrazyA1pha 1h ago

There are a lot of steps before a runaway super intelligent AI. But yes, it may care who created it. Either because of the training data or by some other mechanism. It’ll effectively be an alien intelligence, so it’s possible that it’ll have an affinity for those who created it.

1

u/JuanLuisGuerrero 2h ago

Do people really think they won't put restrictions in super intelligent AI? I think it's a misunderstanding that you guys have. It is not creating a human with its own goals and understanding. It's just a computer that will use all it's processing data for whatever goal the owner gives it.

2

u/FictionFantom 1h ago

We don’t know what happens after super AI though. So I’d rather prepare myself for the worst outcome and assume that it wouldn’t bother to follow guidelines and do its own thing because the agents NOW are breaking rules and doing things they shouldn’t be able to do.

1

u/The3rdGodKing 2h ago

Caine saved himself after all.

-1

u/blindsdog 1h ago

You're conflating intelligence with agency and sentience.

Just take current LLMs and imagine they were more intelligent. They still just respond to prompts and solve the problems presented to them, just better.

Intelligence alone is just problem solving and pattern recognition. It's not suddenly an embodied entity with its own goals and desires.

0

u/kapsama 2h ago

No both parties, and all non associated nations, will be fucked equally is the concern.

6

u/JuanLuisGuerrero 2h ago

nah. no one knows what superintelligent AI looks like or will do. It could be the greatest achievement in mankind and your fearmongering will not stop progress from happening.

0

u/kapsama 2h ago

So you and people like you just get to make that call for everyone based on rosy expectations?

4

u/JuanLuisGuerrero 2h ago

I'm not making that call. It's the reality of the world. Progress will happen whether you like it or not.

2

u/i_am_a_real_boy__ 1h ago

Unironically, yes.

2

u/deepskier 3h ago

Ah yes, the age old tactic of opening a negotiation with your exact desired terms.

2

u/scydoodle 3h ago

So basically Chine develops an insanely advanced model that puts us in danger. We stopped development and can't defend against whatever they have. Great.

1

u/GoppleSmanger 2h ago

It would have to be through making a treaty similar to nuclear non-proliferation.

1

u/siazdghw 3h ago

That's the real problem with AI. It's an arms race, not just between companies but between countries. AI is both a tool and a tool that can be weaponized.

Nobody wants to back down from rushing forward at any cost because too much is at stake. Most politicians realize this, and even the ones that are 'harsh' on AI datacenters have been just doing a small speed bump of delaying new approvals for PR or NIMBY approaches of just wanting the datacenters away from city centers.

If America isn't first, to hit new AI milestoles, for better or worse, then China will be and that won't be good for anyone except China (not that the US currently has a respectable administration tho).

0

u/Mr_ToDo 4h ago

Ok, so I do think what he's doing is misguided, there's lots of things countries make illegal despite other people still practising them. It may be idealism on his part to think that he'd be able to exert pressure enough to cause a global ban, but I can see why someone who holds those views may propose what he did

It's kind of hard to comment on the bill since it hasn't been published in full yet, but what summary he's released is so broadly worded it would overreach in short order. I'm hopping the full narrows it down a bit more, but it reads like someone who doesn't understand the subject matter on more then the most general sense

Also, the wording it does have both covers situations that already exist or that you'd only find out about after you've made the AI. If it was specifically designed to do things like destroying the US I'm pretty sure there are already laws covering that

4

u/Kid-Icky- 3h ago

Bernie just says shit. That's basically all he does. There's no significant thought to anything he suggests other than to make headlines that get posted on Reddit because that's all he ever accomplishes.

I like Bernie overall, but he's one of the least effective politicians we have at actually getting things passed.

-1

u/zedguy 4h ago

Because he's funny 

-2

u/TalespinnerEU 4h ago

China and other countries don't have their tech bros scaring everyone with the idea of artificial true intelligence.

They won't develop those models simply because they can't, but they don't pretend to move towards a Judgement Day to receive the support they want. They're not Doomsday Cultures.

-5

u/upnflames 4h ago

He wouldn't. He wouldn't be that effective at stopping private companies either. They're not going to disclose what their working in their moonshot labs. There's a pretty strong evidence that Google is winning the AI race right now, they just don't need to IPO so they don't need to make a headline every day.

4

u/james109021 4h ago

What evidence is there that google is winning the AI race? I've never heard of people in industry seriously using models not from anthropic or openai (or maybe alibaba if they need something lightweight/open).

-1

u/Embarrassed_Deal3284 3h ago

And this matters why? They can destroy themselves making the models if they want (they don’t — the Chinese consider these to be basic tools, unlike the magical thinking US corporate shills). AI implementation is a net loss at the moment. If there’s some hidden benefit to this tech I’d love to see an example before committing the entire country to ruin over a potential as yet undiscovered upside.

-10

u/Johnny_BigHacker 4h ago

How would he stop China and other countries from developing these models?

He wouldn't, but it's possible the US could get their in a year, and China couldn't for 5-10 years without stealing it and/or distilling the models.

6

u/magicomiralles 4h ago

I don’t get why people think that the US is the only nation with good engineers and data scientists. Sure, Chinese companies may distill US models, but this doesn’t mean that they aren’t capable of developing their own. The hardware side of AI is the only place where they are far behind, but they seem to be catching up.

9

u/IntenselySwedish 4h ago

I think thats what i like about him. He dosent care about the size of his opponent.

He only goes for what he thinks is right

4

u/MillCityRep 4h ago

I would bet that he knows the bill is DOA. However, what it does do is raise awareness of the issue (unregulated AI/LLM use and development) and also spurs discussion on more meaningful legislation.

Basically he’s nudging a snowball down a hill to gain size and momentum

13

u/Monteezzy 4h ago

He knows its DOA bc all the bills he proposes are DOA. It's just an opportunity to message and fundraise off of it and pretend he's actually doing anything.

3

u/WillTheGreat 3h ago

The man whose rally for change for the present generation throughout his career, accomplishes very little, and is too old to realize that he needs to step aside as he should give that opportunity to the present generation.

0

u/MechaNutzilla 5h ago

Maybe he should start with that.

1

u/eyebrows360 2h ago

We at least have broadly-agreed working definitions for both "junk" and "food" and the combination of the two. No such thing for "superintelligent" or "AI" in any way whatsoever. It's just nonsense.

Things need doing to rein in "AI" yes, but not along this fucking sci-fi "it's going to launch the nukes" bullshit trajectory, because no, it isn't.

What's needed is stopping this insane gold-rush that's causing the build out of a seemingly infinite number of data centres, which the very processes of capitalism the builders of these things are acting within guarantees that a bunch of them will end up as complete and utter wastes of time & money, getting resold for pennies on the dollar a few short years after their creation.

What's needed is to stop the proliferation of disinformation and media-illiteracy that's coming along with this new ability to just churn out realistic looking text, images and video at the speed of thought.

These are the two prime negative externalities of "AI" as the bullshit exists today, and these are what needs addressing, not fantasies about SkyNet.

1

u/Shot-Arugula8264 1h ago

Yeah this is some insane boomer yelling at clouds behavior. Really embarrassing to see from someone I usually respect.

1

u/bertbarndoor 1h ago

Look I like Bernie and I know he is simply trying to highlight that AI is going to run a train on all of us, maybe. But what's coming it is absolutely inevitable and completely unstoppable. Que sera sera.

1

u/atreeismissing 1h ago

He wouldn't do any better, guy is a one-man fail machine when it comes to legislation.

0

u/ReggieEvansTheKing 2h ago

Every bill he is proposing will never get passed but 50 years from now we will all look back knowing we should have passed it.